Talk: The Cases of the Children of Political Repression Victims

The Dickson Poon School of Law and King’s College London invites to join the talk about political repression victims and their children.

The Russian Law on the Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions, adopted in 1991, was aimed at protecting the rights of persons affected by abuse of power, their rehabilitation, restoration of civil rights, eliminating the consequences of arbitrariness and ensuring adequate compensation for material damage. The law also contained a number of special measures to restore the rights of children of repressed parents born in places of deprivation of liberty, exile, deportation, and special settlement. However, these rights were diluted by subsequent legislation.

In a landmark decision on 10 December 2019, the Constitutional Court of the Russian Federation upheld the housing rights of three Russian citizens, Alisa Meissner, Elisaveta Mikhaylova, and Eugenia Shasheva, all born to parents who had lived in Moscow but been deported or resettled in the 1930s. This seminar will address the decision’s legal basis and its wider political significance.

Speaker: Marina Belykh (Lomovtseva). Associate Professor at the Ural State Law University in Yekaterinburg, Russia and concurrently holds the position of Chair of the Constitutional Law Division of the Charter Court of Sverdlovsk Region. Until recently, she was a Director of a Law Clinic of the Institute of Justice of the Ural State Law University.

Discussant: Jane Henderson, academic lawyer with a long-standing interest in foreign and comparative law, and particularly the Russian legal system. Until recently she was Senior Lecturer in Russian Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law. She retired last September but continues her main research interest in Russian constitutional law. She is the rapporteur on Russia for the journal European Public Law.

The event is free.